User:ThomasW/thesis v1

Thesis underdevelopment, not proofread

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Ink, Photography and Bytes

The media of the present influence how we think about the media of the past or, for that matter, those of the future. (Kittler,1999,p xxi)' Humanity have always been trying to record and preserve knowledge, the earliest human used spoken language, retold and retold until it got written down. (unsure how to start it)

Print

Library Alexandria

“paper was introduced during the ninth or tenth centuries, and the first paper found there is of the oriental type (called bombykinon or bambakeron). The fact that is was cheap than and other material gradually gave it ascendancy, but its rapid deterioration was a matter of great concern to the monks” (Baez,2008,p95) One of the big “first” but also mostly one of the most well know library of ancient times is The Library of Alexandria, most famous for burning down. It was the first joint country library, collection mostly Egyptian, Greek and Roman text. A lot of this can be contribute to the local law that stated that all new arrivals had to hand over their writing texts in the possessions so they can be copied. It was as much or even more a political decisions then of idea knowledge sharing.

We have to remember that museums and libraries were closely linked to the nations power structor, so when they were burned to the ground, silence legitimized the catastrophe” (Baez,2008,p2) The collection where not located in once place central location, but was distributed between different warehouses all around the city of Alexandria, most of this places where at the docks in Alexandria, natural close to the ships for their collection came from.

“Agothon of Athens, a tragic poet quote by Plato and admired by Socrates , apparently wrote books of an almost irresistible perfection, but today we have nothing but weak fragments” (Baez,2008,p41) As the library was a part of a larger power structure, the library was a target for people opposed to the current political system. Contrary to most belief, it never did burn down once as most people think. It happened over time. During its existence from around the year 145 BC to its last big burning in 642 AD. It suffered multiple burnings and the main theorise of what destroyed it is everyone from the Romans, christian rebels, earthquakes and the economics of its day as founding may have been cut over time.

“Nowadays there are no examples of Greek papyri prior to the fourth century BCE. In fact , despite the labor of libraries and the widespread book business of the Hellenistic era, texts on papyrus not recopied or copied onto codisc were lost. (Baez,2008,P88 ) Since the days of Alexandria, many library have come and gone, lost in wars, burned, moved around or killed off by economics and political decisions. One of the latest library to be cut down was the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam, its an ethnographic museum that have existed since 1864, but in 2013 they had to get rid for its collection of books and documents as because of budget cuts.

Mircofilm

In the late 1800s the invention of microfilm made the storing and sharing of information a much space saving endeavour compared to collection of printed books. The invention of microfilm can be traced back to the year 1839 and inventor John Benjnamin Dancer , but it was no clear use of it before later in the 1920 when liberalise tok notes for the film format. “Microfilm was declared the saviour of newspaper preservation, and by 1946 the Bell & Howell Company made the filming of newspapers a major part of its business. But microfilm poses its own preservation problems. Acetate-based film, which was used up until the 1980s, deteriorates when not stored at the proper humidity and temperature, resulting in the loss of information captured on the film. In most cases, the original issues from which the acetate microfilm was made were discarded” (Kathleen, Nora, 2015, p292) 67 years later from John Benjnamin Dancer invention, Belgian Paul Otlet used the microfilm as a key part of his world archive. Paul Otlet was a 19th century utopian, an inventor and peace activist that wanted to gather all of the world knowledge in a world city that he wanted to building in Belgium, His most famous invention was the universal decimal classification system for library’s together with lawyer and president of the International Peace Bureau Henri La Fotaine. Paul Otlet was also a huge proponent for microfilm and its capacity of storing large amounts of information. “Phonographs, radio, television, telephone — these instruments taken as substitutes for the book will in fact become the new book, the most powerful work for the diffusion of human thoughts. This will be the radiated library, and the televised book.” (Truefilms,2007,Online) Large archives were moved to microfilm at that time of Otlet, one of the most known is the effort of the archives of american newspapers that was moved to microfilm in the 1900 century, but by doing this they often did throw away their original printed copies, the act over putting them on microfilm was also a destructive process as the book that they was collected in was cut open by removing the spine to be photographs. “ The vast majority of original American newspapers from the 1870s on has been destroyed and replaced by microfil —appears to be correct.”36 The full implications of this tragedy have yet to be completely comprehended” (Silverman,2015,p370) Now it seems that the decisions was in a way too optimistic for a long term solution, as microfilm deteriorates just as normal safety film, they all are subject to the issue of vinegar syndrome. “The symptoms of vinegar syndrome are a pungent vinegar smell (hence the name), followed eventually by shrinkage, embrittlement, and buckling of the gelatin “ (The National Film Preservation Foundation,2015,Online) The decision to put books on microfilm was an economic and space saving decision. The promise of 100s of pages on a single role of microfilm was a convenient way to storing and collect knowledge, but it may have been overambitious , as we now know that it was more a short term solution and not a long term solution as envisioned by it practitioners

Otlets dream never tok off, and his ideas fade over time, but some 30 years later, the American Vannevar Bush worth later thought up the concept of the MEMEX.

MEMEX

The MEMEX was a concept for information storing and retrieval created by Vannevar Bush. Vannevar Bush was a american inventor and engineer that also was the headed the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development under WW2. He wanted to create a new from of mechanical information retrieval system, a system that made it possible to retrieve and store every type of information like books, sound and text. We can look at it as an easily as early type multimedia device.

The world has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it. (Bush,1945,Online) The MEMEX was envisioned right before the microprocessor and was using current day technologies like microfilm and vacuum tubes It all was envisioned to be put inside a machine in the size of an office desk.

“In one end is the stored material. The matter of bulk is well taken care of by improved microfilm. Only a small part of the interior of the MEMEX is devoted to storage, the rest to mechanism. Yet if the user inserted 5000 pages of material a day it would take him hundreds of years to fill the repository, so he can be profligate and enter material freely. (Bush,1945,Online) The MEMEX was never built, but its inspired people like J.C.R Licklider, Douglas Engelbart and Ted Nelson, Ted Nelson later worked in the new concept of hypermedia with his “Project Xanadu”. Inspired by Bush's worked on the MEMEX but more in the direction of what would become the World Wide Web.

“Consider film of the same thickness as paper, although thinner film will certainly be usable. Even under these conditions there would be a total factor of 10,000 between the bulk of the ordinary record on books, and its microfilm replica. The Encyclopoedia Britannica could be reduced to the volume of a matchbox. A library of a million volumes could be compressed into one end of a desk. If the human race has produced since the invention of movable type a total record, in the form of magazines, newspapers, books, tracts, advertising blurbs, correspondence, having a volume corresponding to a billion books, the whole affair, assembled and compressed, could be lugged off in a moving van. Mere compression, of course, is not enough; one needs not only to make and store a record but also be able to consult it, and this aspect of the matter comes later. Even the modern great library is not generally consulted; it is nibbled at by a few.” (Bush,1945,Online) How have Paul Otlets work and Vannevar Bush MEMEX impacted been on todays memory storage? The use of microfilm has been stopped, but the archive of microfilm still exists. They are often the only traces left, as the original often ended up in the trash or burned to save storage space and money after they where put on microfilm. Comparing it today, some library do throw out their physical books after they have been digitized. We can wonder how future library will look back on that decision.

Bytes

The invention of the microprocessor and its technologies promise what Vannevar Bush. wanted with his MEMEX project. In the beginning the technologies was located to government and private institutions, the institutions that help supported its creations. Not before the late 1970s and the introduction of the personal computer became digital information something most people had to deal with and had access to. In the beginning formats like the floppy disk and magnetic tape where used in the home, but hard-drives and magnetic tape was the leader on the business side.

Unlike analog systems, digital technologies essentially convert information of all kinds, including sound and image, to a set of 1s and 0s. Digitized information can be stored efficiently and replicated an unlimited number of times within the circuits of a digital device, reproducing the data with almost perfect accuracy. In a communications context, information that is digitally encoded can be passed from one switch to the next with much less degradation than in analog transmission. (Hafner,1998,p37) The main format for storing data is hard-drives, solid state memory are gradually taking over the place of magnetic plater hard-drives, this formats have their own share of problems related to them, but they are all dealing with bits and bytes in one or more way..

Computers, by their nature, copy. Typing this line, the computer has copied the text multiple times in a variety of memory registers. I touch a button to type a letter, this releases a voltage that is then translated into digital value, which is then copied into a memory buffer and sent to another part of the computer, copied again into RAM and sent to the graphics card where it is copied again, and so on. The entire operation of a computer is built around copying data: copying is one of the most essential characteristics of computer science. One of the ontological facts of digital storage is that there is no difference between a computer program, a video, mp3-song, or an e-book. They are all composed of voltage represented by ones and zeros. Therefore they are all subject to the same electronic fact: they exist to be copied and can only ever exist as copies. (Warwick,2014,p 9) With digital files, you need an interpreter to read or know what the files are, all digital files are 1 and 0, but access to this files can be lost in multiple stages, comparing it to analog where there is less points of failures, this digital points of failure can be. 1. No machines to read the physical formats. 2. No programs to read the files for company’s take away file support. 3. “Cloude” services close down, not informing are giving and there exists option to download it yourself 4. Information gets hidden behind paywalls and you loss control over your information. “In the 1990s, when the new role of the computer as a Universal Media Machines became apparent, already computerized societies went into a digitizing craze, All existing books and videotapes, photographs, and audio recodings started to be fed into computers and an ever-increasing rate. (Manovich,2001,p224)

Floppy

The Floppy disk was invented in 1967 by David L. Noble at IBM, They wanted an easy way to input information to their new System/370 machines. The format has existed in numeral versions since it creation, the most successful where the 8, 5 and 3½- inch versions, the lasted version invented by SONY in the mid 1980s.

It was not before the success of the personal computer systems in the late 80s that most people came to know the floppy disk as a way to store and share information and not just something for major institutions and companies.

There are libraries, archives and collections out there with floppies. They probably never got funding or time to take the data off – there’s a great chance the floppies are considered plain old acquisition items and objects, like books or a brooch or a duvet cover. They’re not. They’re temporary storage spaces for precious data that has faded beyond retrieval. (Scott,2011,Online) Everything from company files to pirated computer games where things that got easy to swapped between people. The notion of the “sneaker net” was born for file sharing between people on foot.

Offline file sharing was known in the 1990s as ‘Sneakernet’, where someone with data would put it on a floppy disk, and walk it to another computer.(Warwick,2014,p8) The floppy disk is a plastic disk coated with a magnetic oxide coating. As the coating is magnetic, it is sensitive to magnetic fields, this is how the information is writen on it.

The problem with the floppy is both files and machine issue. Too read a floppy disk, you need the machines and a system that can read them. One can ask why even think about them now, as they was abandon long ago, but there is still data lock up in the format, writes, local and governmental history, but it maybe to lat for the floppies as times goes by,

“I’m telling you the days of it being a semi-dependable storehouse are over. It’s been too long, too much, and you’ve asked too much of what the floppies were ever designed to do. If you or someone helping you gets data off of it, then it’s luck and chance, not engineering and proper expectation. A lot of promises were made back then, very big promises about the dependability, and by most standards, those promises came out pretty darn good – it has often been the case of extracting data from floppies long after the company that wrote the software, that made the computer, that manufactured the disk drive parts, and manufactured the disk have gone into the Great Not Here. (Scott,2011,Online) The magnetic oxide coating is a finite and has a limited life time on witch it will keep its charge, so even with the machines on hand, to really get the information out there still needs to be a charge on the disk and by being objects where you can deleted information with a fridge magnet, its not a safe place for it to be.

“Someone once raised the question of whether it makes sense to re-copy masters or back-ups from time to time to make new backups. My initial reaction was that I didn’t think it was worthwhile. Having given it some thought, however, it might not be a bad idea. If there is a degradation that takes place with time on an untouched back-up as it sits on the shelf, re-copying does in fact restore the information to a more pristine state and thus acts as added protection against the probability of losing your data. “ (Jensen,unknown,p4) The floppy is mostly now a nostalgic relic of the past, but just as the game cartridge for video game system and its reference to the 8-track tape, the floppy disk is getting reference in by its shape and looks in later optical formats like the Mini Disc, format also made by SONY it also lives on as the symbol for “saving” as for example in word processing software.

Also it is still being used on some places, mostly in legacy system like industrial machines, also in some governments floppies are still being used and in Norway the files of patients are all send manual in the mail on floppy disks as a way to swap patients data between doctors and hospitals.

Magnetic storage have not been the only physical format also optical storage have existed for a while now, the most well know optical format is the Compact disc. Its storage size of 650mb was often larger then the hard-drives, first introduce as an audio format.

““CBS released the world’s first commercially available CD, a reissue of Billy Joel’s 52nd Street, in Japan in October 1982. (Lynskey,2015,Online)

Compact disc

The modern plastic Compact disc was invented as a format to replacement the vinyl. Made as joint venture by Dutch company Phillips and Japanese company SONY. Proposes as a may as more durable medium and better sound quality then the vinyl. There where a big emphasises on the durability of the format, its resilience to scratching was often highlight. This focus made one of engineers at Philips annoyed.

““We should not put emphasis on the fact it will last for ever because it will not last for ever,” he says. “We should put emphasis on the quality of sound and ease of handling.” (Lynskey,e,2015,online)“ The Compact disc is two layers of plastic polycarbonate and a layer of foil that is in the middle, lasers indent the surface lacker with microscopic pits.

The Compact disc inspired interactive fiction with its later versions of the CD-ROM, its was promised as a new way of experiencing media and things that used to be in print now moved over to this new style of interactive media or magazine.

One of these experiments in publishing was from the British design studio 8vo, they published eight issues of their magazine, Octavo, a graphic design magazine that was true to this life, experiment with the new type of publishing.

There were several Compact disc title available. These were mostly educational encyclopedic collections which used the (then) massive storage capacity of a Compact disc, 650MB (as opposed to a floppy disk of 2MB, or typical computer hard drive of 80MB), to deliver sound, text and moving image via user interface to a computer screen. (Muir,2005,p384) The optical discs system, are all subject to the same issues. They scratch easily, they break and are effected by temperature and oxygen. Old Compact discs will often turn yellow in colour, this is because of the layers between the plastic and metal layers is separating and the foil is getting in contact with oxygen.

“In 1999 it was discovered that certain mushrooms of the Geoterichum variety (used in cheese making) can damage compact disks” (Baez,2008p261 ) Another problem is the files themselves, as digital files are compatible to the current programs and system as they where design on, they often cant keep up with current version of programs and systems.

““Octavo 92.8 was designed to run on a minimum specified Mac with 68020 processor, 4MB of RAM, a colour screen of 640x480 pixels displaying 256 colours. Typical, this would have been a Macintosh LC. [...] The irony is that the pace of change of technology has left Octavo 92.8 largely inaccessible. (Muir,2005,p386) “ As a format that's its still in use, it still has some impact, but the similarities to the floppies in the computer industry is senificanse is decasing. Fewer amd fewer computers come with cd-drives, the cd's primarily is used as a audio format, The compact disc current version the BLUE-RAY is used in movies and video game system. There is not dough that its not if, but when the compact disk is a dead format.

““It’s dying. It will go obsolete like the floppy disc did. It just always takes a little more time than you’d think.” (Lynskey,,2015,online)“

HARD-DRIVE

The hard-drive have been a part of the computer since much its lifetime, first used in 1950 and invented by IBM, but did not reach consumer computers before the late 80s. The platter-based hard-drive, its a spinning disk, often aluminium or glass coated with a metallic oxide coating that spins from 5000 to 7500 rpm inside a metal casing. They read and write needle floats on a cushion of air where it read and write on the metallic coating,

A common error that effects latter-based hard-drives suffer from is shock damage, often leading to damage on the surface of the spinning platers, often been quickly to recognise as the “click of death”, others failures can the faulty circuit board. Hard-drive not being used for a while also has a tendency to size up as the oil in the ball bearings can dry up.

Even that often all of this failures makes the unusable for most people, computer recover company can recover around 90% of hard-drives they work on. But the future failures will come from is the metallic oxide itself, as metallic charge have a finite life, its will be a time when the charge is discarded even on perceivable work drives. The average lifespan for a hard-drive is 4years, but even old drives there is possibly for recover wit the rite procedures.

“The challenges of maintaining digital archives over long periods of time are as much social and institutional as technological,” reads a 2003 NSF and Library of Congress report. “Even the most ideal technological solutions will require management and support from institutions that in time go through changes in direction, purpose, management, and funding.” (Broussard,2015,online) Current the SSD or Solid State Drive are taking over the market for hard-drives, with the big selling point of being more shook resistant and faster read and write speed, but is it better? “A piece of paper can burn and you can still kind of get something from it. With a hard drive or a URL, when it’s gone, there is just zero recourse.” (LaFrance,2015,Online)

Summary

“The very nature of digital [history] is that it's both inherently easy to save and inherently easy to utterly destroy forever.” (Orland,2015,Online) The ancient Egyptian used local power to enforce the aqussions of knowledge and located on central location. Knowledge is power and we can think maybe the library was a way to be the biggest knowledge power in the region. There are always promises of the new and better, something new gets invented, that takes the position of the format from before, but often the long term perspective gets lost on the way to profit and market shares or is it their investors get blinded by their own utopia visions of the new and better, when the makers themselves know that is not perfect as the case of the Compact disc and the reality of its durability contra its reality. “Digital media, through the memory at its core, was supposed to solve, if not dissolve, archival problems such as degrading celluloid or scratched vinyl, not create archival problems of its own. The limited lifespan of Compact discs will no doubt shock those who disposed of their vinyl in favor of digitally remastered classics, that is, if they still use Compact discs or an operating system that can read them. Old computer files face the same problem. (Wendy,2015,p153-154)“

Now the move away from physical formats gets more aggressive in the marketing, free online cloud storage is taking the main stage, free unlimited storage is the topic of the day and often provided from big corporations. “My biggest bugbear about this industry is that they all think short-term,” says Webster. “Nobody ever thinks long-term. All these executives were sitting there being paid huge bonuses on increased profits and they didn’t care. I don’t think anyone saw it coming. I remember the production guy at Virgin saying, ‘In a few years, you’re going to be able to carry all the music you want around on something the size of a credit card.’ And we all laughed. Don’t be ridiculous! How can you do that?” (Lynskey,,2015,online) Now the industry move more and more to external storage or what they call the “cloud” how will this impact the topic? “The challenges of maintaining digital archives over long periods of time are as much social and institutional as technological,” reads a 2003 NSF and Library of Congress report. “Even the most ideal technological solutions will require management and support from institutions that in time go through changes in direction, purpose, management, and funding.” (Broussard,2015,online)'

Biography

Kittle

• Baez, Fernando (2008) A Universal History of the Destruction of Books: From Ancient Sumer to Modern-day Iraq, Atlas & Co
• National Film Preservation Foundation (2015) Vinegar Syndrome, [Online] Available: http://www.filmpreservation.org/preservation-basics/vinegar-syndrome (06.022015)
• Hafner, Katie (1998) Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet, New York, Simon & Schuster
• Manovich, Lev, (2001) The Language of New Media, United States of America, The MIT Press
• Bush, Vannevar (1945) As We May Think, theatlantic.com [Online] Available: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/ (13.11.2015)
• A. Hansen, Kathleen, Paul, Nora (2015) Newspaper archives reveal major gaps in digital age, Newspaper Research Journal.
• Warwick, Henry Radical Tactics of the Offline Library, (2014), Amsterdam, INC
• Hafner, Katie (1998) Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet, New York, Simon & Schuster
• LaFrance, Adrienne (2015) Raiders of the Lost Web, theatlantic.com [Online] Available: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/10/raiders-of-the-lost-web/409210/ (24.11.2015)
• Jason, Scott (2011) Floppy Disks: It’s Too Late , http://ascii.textfiles.com [Online] Available: http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/3191 (12.12.2015)
• Hansen, Kathleen A, Paul,Nora, Broussard, B, McCain, E, Silverman, Randy (2015) ‘Newspaper archives reveal major gaps in digital age’ Newspaper Research Journal, Vol.36, No.4, Fall 2015 pp.290-298
• Orland , Kyles (2015) The quest to save today’s gaming history from being lost forever, http://arstechnica.com [Online] Available: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/06/the-quest-to-save-todays-gaming-history-from-being-lost-forever/1/ (08.06.2015)
• National Film Preservation Foundation (2015) Vinegar Syndrome, [Online] Available: http://www.filmpreservation.org/preservation-basics/vinegar-syndrome (06.02.2016)
• Lynskey, Lorian (2015) How the compact disc lost its shine, The Guardian.com [Online] Available: http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/may/28/how-the-compact-disc-lost-its-shine?CMP=fb_gu/ (01.06.2015)
• The Enduring Ephemeral, or the Future Is a Memory Author(s): By Wendy Hui Kyong Chun Source: Critical Inquiry, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Autumn 2008), pp. 148-171 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/595632 . Accessed: 22/09/2015 09:06
• Holt, Mark Muir, Hamish 8vo - On the Outside (2005), London, Lars Muller Publishers
• Truefilms (2007) The Man Who Wanted to Classify the World, http://truefilms.com/ [Online] Available: http://truefilms.com/the-man-who-wan/ (14.02.2015)

OLD Ink, Photography and Bytes

The earlies humans relaid on spoken history, people shared stories around camp-fires and only the worth while stories stayed in peoples memories, later the one that survived and new stories got written down, in stone, clay, papyrus, paper and now since the 1950s, in digital form.

But since then, the notion is that we are saving more and more of your history, we are somehow persevering a lot, but is current form of information storing new thing in human history? And how does the past influences your current state, can we learn from the past and does its success and failures relate to current practices.

Is digital media like magnetic storage, solid state and the “cloud” any different from papyrus, paper and national libraries? It will be to hard to answer them all in this thesis, but by giving some context, I hope to make you understand more of questions.

Ink

Library Alexandria

The Library of Alexandria is probably the most well know of all libraries but mostly for it burning down. It was the first joint country library, collection mostly Egyptian, Greek and Roman text. A lot of this can be contribute to the local law that stated that all new arrivals had to hand over their writing texts in the possessions so they can be copied. It was as much or even more a political decisions then of idea knowledge sharing.

We have to remember that museums and libraries were closely linked to the nations power structor, so when they were burned to the ground, silence legitimized the catastrophe” (Baez,2008,p2) The collection got larger over time and a lot of this where not located in once place, a lot of the collection where located at the docks of Alexandria, natural close to the ships where most of their collection came from.

“Agothon of Athens, a tragic poet quote by Plato and admired by Socrates , apparently wrote books of an almost irresistible perfection, but today we have nothing but weak fragments” (Baez,2008,p41) As a part of a larger system and power structure, the library where are target for people opposed to the current system that was in charge. It never did burn down once as most people think. It happen over time. In its existence from around the year 145 BC to its last big burning in 642 AD. It suffers multiple burnings. The main theorise of what destroyed it is everyone from the Romans, christian rebels, Earthquakes and economics as founding may have been cut over time. Not so different from today time with budget cuts.

“Nowadays there are no examples of Greek papyri prior to the fourth century BCE. In fact , despite the labor of libraries and the widespread book business of the Hellenistic era, texts on papyrus not recopied or copied onto codisc were lost. (Baez,2008,P88 ) Comparing the Library of Alexandria you can see the connection with days system of “cloud services”, you had you information over the 3rd party, with or without you consent. If its your image collection or your GPS ordinates true a “social app”. The library was a part of the power structor of its day, today day the power structure still governmental but also private corporate systems.

“paper was introduced during the ninth or tenth centuries, and the first paper found there is of the oriental type (called bombykinon or bambakeron). The fact that is was cheap than and other material gradually gave it ascendancy, but its rapid deterioration was a matter of great concern to the monks” (Baez,2008,p95)

Photography

In the late 1800s the invention of microfilm made the storing and sharing of information a much space saving endeavour. It can be traced back to 1839 and John Benjnamin Dancer. Later 67 years later Belgian Paul Otlet used the microfilm as a key part of his archive. Paul Otlet was a 19th century utopian, an inventor and peace activist that wanted to gather all of the world knowledge in one place. His most famous invention was the universal decimal classification system for library’s together with lawyer and president of the International Peace Bureau Henri La Fotaine. Paul Otlet was also a huge proponent for microfilm and its capacity of storing information.

As a 19th century version of the floppy disc, it was easy to store, and made that library’s and archive was able to share books with no need for the copies to be shipped around but in stead on roles of microfilm.

Paul Otlet had the idea of the storing his collection at the Mundaneum. The Mundaneum is located in Mons in Belgium where he want to make into a central facility for all of the world knowledge. The Mundaneum moved many times and the content was removed from the building under World War 2 to make room for Hitler approved art. It later got located to a building where it was located too around the 2000s.

QUOTES

Paul Otlet collection was moved around more the once, every-time something got removed or lost. His struggles with the politics of his time, getting locked out of his own building. The conflict of two world wars did not help the collection stay together. Again maintain a hug collection like this needs money and the access to founds to maintain the collection was also a major issue. The collection later got put in an old building in Mons for a period with no supervision after Otlets death. His microfilm collection also will experience vinegar syndrome over time.

“Microfilm was declared the saviour of newspaper preservation, and by 1946 the Bell & Howell Company made the filming of newspapers a major part of its business. But microfilm poses its own preservation problems. Acetate-based film, which was used up until the 1980s, deteriorates when not stored at the proper humidity and temperature, resulting in the loss of information captured on the film. In most cases, the original issues from which the acetate microfilm was made were discarded” (Kathleen, Nora, 2015, p292)

Large archives was moved to microfilm and their original thrown in the trash early in the 1900 century. Now it seems that the decisions was a way to optimistic for a long term solution, as microfilm deteriorates just as normal safety film, they all are subject to the issue of vinegar syndrome.

“The symptoms of vinegar syndrome are a pungent vinegar smell (hence the name), followed eventually by shrinkage, embrittlement, and buckling of the gelatin “ (The National Film Preservation Foundation,2015,Online) relation to current technical standards? 00000

MEMEX

The MEMEX was a concept for information storing and retrieval created by Vannevar Bush. He wanted to create a new from of mechanical information retrieval system, a system that made it possible to retrieve and store every type of information like books, sound. We can look at it as an easily for a multimedia device

The world has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it. (Bush,1945,Online)

The MEMEX was envisioned right before the microprocessor and was using current day technologies like microfilm, tube electronics and magnetic tape to store its information. It all was put inside a machine in the shape and size of an office desk.

“In one end is the stored material. The matter of bulk is well taken care of by improved microfilm. Only a small part of the interior of the MEMEX is devoted to storage, the rest to mechanism. Yet if the user inserted 5000 pages of material a day it would take him hundreds of years to fill the repository, so he can be profligate and enter material freely. (Bush,1945,Online)

The MEMEX was never build, but its inspired people like J.C.R Licklider, Douglas Engelbart and Ted Nelson, Ted Nelson later work in then the new concept of hypermedia on his “Project Xanadu”.

“Consider film of the same thickness as paper, although thinner film will certainly be usable. Even under these conditions there would be a total factor of 10,000 between the bulk of the ordinary record on books, and its microfilm replica. The Encyclopoedia Britannica could be reduced to the volume of a matchbox. A library of a million volumes could be compressed into one end of a desk. If the human race has produced since the invention of movable type a total record, in the form of magazines, newspapers, books, tracts, advertising blurbs, correspondence, having a volume corresponding to a billion books, the whole affair, assembled and compressed, could be lugged off in a moving van. Mere compression, of course, is not enough; one needs not only to make and store a record but also be able to consult it, and this aspect of the matter comes later. Even the modern great library is not generally consulted; it is nibbled at by a few.” (Bush,1945,Online)

Not before post WW2 did the digital technologies take over, the memory storage. The cold war created the grounding for the study s and theory’s of cybernetics to take hold. It was most pushed ahead for people like Vannevar Bush and Nobert Weiner. Weiner defined cybernetics in 1948 as “ the scientific study of control and communication in the animal and the machine” in his book “Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine” The use of microfilm have for all been stopped, but the archive of microfilm still exist and now are the only traces of the original material put on microfilm in there day.

The media of the present influence how we think about the media of the past or, for that matter, those of the future. (Kittler,1999,p xxi)

But even with with having old or outdated formats, we still are need to deal with them.

Bytes

The invention of the microprocessor and its technologies promise what Vannevar Bush. wanted with his MEMEX project. In the beginning the technologies was located to government and prvar institutions like banks, institutions that help supported its creations. Not before the late 1970s and the introduction of the personal computer became digital information something most people had to deal with and had access to. In the beginning formats like the floppy disk and tape casset where used in the home, but hard-drives and magnetic tape was the leader on the business side.

Unlike analog systems, digital technologies essentially convert information of all kinds, including sound and image, to a set of 1s and 0s. Digitized information can be stored efficiently and replicated an unlimited number of times within the circuits of a digital device, reproducing the data with almost perfect accuracy. In a communications context, information that is digitally encoded can be passed from one switch to the next with much less degradation than in analogue transmission. (Hafner,1998,p37)

Now the main format and system for storing data is hard-drives, solid state memory at are gradually taking over the place of magnetic plater hard-drives, this formats have their own share of problems related to them, but they are all dealing with bits and bytes in one or more way..

Computers, by their nature, copy. Typing this line, the computer has copied the text multiple times in a variety of memory registers. I touch a button to type a letter, this releases a voltage that is then translated into digital value, which is then copied into a memory buffer and sent to another part of the computer, copied again into RAM and sent to the graphics card where it is copied again, and so on. The entire operation of a computer is built around copying data: copying is one of the most essential characteristics of computer science. One of the ontological facts of digital storage is that there is no difference between a computer program, a video, mp3-song, or an e-book. They are all composed of voltage represented by ones and zeros. Therefore they are all subject to the same electronic fact: they exist to be copied and can only ever exist as copies. (Warwick,2014,p 9)

Optical storage have existed for a while now, the most well know optical format is the CD-ROM, since the burnable CD-ROM was introduce to the public in 19xx it quickly got its place in the home computer. Its storage size of 650mb was often larger then the current day hard-drives.Other format was the (TO BE ADDED). The laser-disc was experienced as a format for multimedia, most know from the BBC Doomsday project in 19xx. A project that stumbled on technical and economical problems. Its no only still exist because of media archaeology project with (TO BE ADDED)

Floppy

The Floppy disk was invented in 1967 by David L. Noble at IBM, They wanted an easy way to input information to their new System/370 machines. Its a magnetic coated plastic disk inside a plastic cover. The format have existed in numeral versions since it creation, the most successful where the 8, 5 and 3½- inch versions.

It was not before the success of the personal computer systems in the late 80s that most people came to know the floppy disk as a way to store and share information and not just something for major institutions and company’s.

There are libraries, archives and collections out there with floppies. They probably never got funding or time to take the data off – there’s a great chance the floppies are considered plain old acquisition items and objects, like books or a brooch or a duvet cover. They’re not. They’re temporary storage spaces for precious data that has faded beyond retrieval. (Scott,2011,Online)

As a format the floppy disc where able to read and write, its size and portability it served as the choice for most people. Most files where only a few kilo bites to the lasted successful versions to 1,45MB. There was other version that was made, but only

It became a standard format to swap information between people, as the internet still at the time was something for university and government institutions. Everything for company files to pirated computer games where things easy to swapped between people. The notion of the “sneaker net” was born for file sharing between people on foot.

Offline file sharing was known in the 1990s as ‘Sneakernet’, where someone with data would put it on a floppy disk, and walk it to another computer.(Warwick,2014,p8)

The floppy’s magnetic oxide coatings coating xxxxx xxxx relation to current technical standards? xxx

CD

The modern plastic cd was invented as a replace meant for vinyl disk, Made as joint venture by Dutch company Philiips and Japanese company SONY. Proposes as a may more durable medium then the vinyl, it quickly found a new are as a storage disc as the cd had the capacity as 650mb when most hard-drives at that time where mer 50-100mb big. But still, its so posed superiority over others are fake.. its folmy as easy scratched. Xxx , one of the dutch engineers at Philips as noyed that the marketing department focus on the durability of the disc, and not the sound quality.

““Cassettes were completely disposable. When CD came along and said this will last you a lifetime, customers really did lap it up. It felt new, it felt shiny, it felt exciting.” (Lynskey,2015,Online)“ how was it generated? The CD was created as a join partnership between dutch Philip and Japanese company Sony in the 1980, It was to be a project to invent a better and small audio format then the vinyl disc. The CD is two layers of plastic and on layer of foil in between.

how was it stored?

““My biggest bugbear about this industry is that they all think short-term,” says Webster. “Nobody ever thinks long-term. All these executives were sitting there being paid huge bonuses on increased profits and they didn’t care. I don’t think anyone saw it coming. I remember the production guy at Virgin saying, ‘In a few years, you’re going to be able to carry all the music you want around on something the size of a credit card.’ And we all laughed. Don’t be ridiculous! How can you do that?” (Lynskey,,2015,online)“

how was it degraded? (apparatus) The optical discs system are all subject to the same issues, the scratch easily, break and effect by temperature and oxygen. Old CDs will often turn yellow is colour, this is beosue of the layers between the plastic and metal layers is separating.

“Digital media, through the memory at its core, was supposed to solve, if not dissolve, archival problems such as degrading celluloid or scratched vinyl, not create archival problems of its own. The limited lifespan of CDs will no doubt shock those who disposed of their vinyl in favor of digitally remastered classics, that is, if they still use CDs or an operating system that can read them. Old computer files face the same problem. (Wendy,2015,p153-154)“

Its not only wonerbul from weather and use, but also a cenrtal type of mushroom have a negative impact on the CD.

“In 1999 it was discovered that certain mushrooms of the Geoterichum variety (used in cheese making) can damage compact disks” (Baez,2008p261 )“

relation to current technical standards?

““We should not put emphasis on the fact it will last for ever because it will not last for ever,” he says. “We should put emphasis on the quality of sound and ease of handling.” (Paul McCartney recently recalled the first time George Martin showed him a CD. “George said, ‘This will change the world.’ He told us it was indestructible, you can’t smash it. Look! And – whack – it broke in half.” (Lynskey,e,2015,online)“

relation to current technical standards?

HARD-DRIVE

how was it generated?

how was it stored?

how was it degraded? (apparatus)

“The challenges of maintaining digital archives over long periods of time are as much social and institutional as technological,” reads a 2003 NSF and Library of Congress report. “Even the most ideal technological solutions will require management and support from institutions that in time go through changes in direction, purpose, management, and funding.” (Broussard,2015,online)

relation to current technical standards?

Solid State Memory

usb, ssd how was it generated?

how was it stored?

how was it degraded? (apparatus)

Summary

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Biography

National Film Preservation Foundation (2015) Vinegar Syndrome, [Online] Available: http://www.filmpreservation.org/preservation-basics/vinegar-syndrome (06.022015)

Hafner, Katie (1998) Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet, New York, Simon & Schuster

Licklider wrote, “is that in not too many years, human brains and computing machines will be coupled . . . tightly, and that the resulting partnership will think as no human brain has ever thought and process data in a way not approached by the information-handling machines we know today.” Page22

Baez, Fernando (2008) A Universal History of the Destruction of Books: From Ancient Sumer to Modern-day Iraq, Atlas & Co

Lynskey, Lorian (2015) How the compact disc lost its shine, The Guardian.com [Online] Available: http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/may/28/how-the-compact-disc-lost-its-shine?CMP=fb_gu/ (01.06.2015)

Ludovico, Alessandro (2013) Post Digital Print, Onomatopee

Van Dijck, José (2007) Mediated Memories in the Digital Age, United States of America, Stanford University Press

"Memory is no longer what we remember it to be, but then, memory probably never quite was how we remembered it and way never be what it is now. The present is the only prism we have to look thought to assess memory's past and future, and it is important we look through this contemporary prism from all the possible angels to appreciate memory's complexity and beauty. page 182

The Enduring Ephemeral, or the Future Is a Memory Author(s): By Wendy Hui Kyong Chun Source: Critical Inquiry, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Autumn 2008), pp. 148-171 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/595632 . Accessed: 22/09/2015 09:06

Crucially, memory is an active process, not static. A memory must be held in order to keep it from moving or fading. Memory does not equal storage. p164

"The very nature of digital [history] is that it's both inherently easy to save and inherently easy to utterly destroy forever." (Orland,2015,Online)

“The challenges of maintaining digital archives over long periods of time are as much social and institutional as technological,” reads a 2003 NSF and Library of Congress report. “Even the most ideal technological solutions will require management and support from institutions that in time go through changes in direction, purpose, management, and funding.” (Broussard,2015,online) http://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mediadesign/User:ThomasW/Notes_The_Irony_of_Writing_Online_About_Digital_Preservation

http://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mediadesign/User:ThomasW/Notes_ButStorageisCheap