My software project want to focus on digital archive and digital personal memories. Nowadays, many computational media claim to be created as the archives. Comparing with the traditional archive which are used to store public historical events, as a tool for power control and in general people are not easy to entry, now when the digital age arrives, digital archives become very popular, cheaper and more personal. Such as, computer is a particular case of personal archive, it can store texts, photographs, videos and audios. There are many comparative discussions between human remembering and computer memory, some people believe that computer can help users to store memory for a very long time but human memory is limited. Therefore, there is a kind of phenomenon is generated, people save lots of details of their daily lives or sometimes we can say that everything are stored. Some of those documents are meaningful but some are not. When I was doing the readings researches, I found a quote which is ‘archive is as the system of the functioning of statement things rather than a collection of dust of statements’, form Archaeology of Knowledge (Foucault, 2002: 146). People seem just to keep saved, but there are few considerations of these documents whether necessary to be stored,as well as, very few people will review these digital memory again.
Moreover,when each computer connects with internet, all the private memories will no longer have privacy.Such as, Facebook,people post their daily lives in their webpage, the memories are shareable. And for example,Google is a huge digital archive, its search engine can find out everything that be post in internet. In the past, archive is an architecture but now archive is an abstract space rather than a real place. People do not have to go to somewhere to put their memories in, now they just need a laptop, seat down in front of the computer and typing things in.
But I want to question that do the digital archives really can store everything and keep them forever? Do personal digital memories safely be stored in digital archives?
Lots of users ignore that electromagnetic materials have some limitations. They think that data saved on their digital archives will always be there. Although digital archives able to save a large number of information and keep them longer time. But sometimes old software or hardware is incompatible with the new one or some soft and hard technologies are incompatible. The devices should be continually updated. The digital archives are ephemeral, we can understand like that they also require constant regeneration.Meanwhile,digital devices' memory capacities are limited either.
Furthermore, digital archive is not a completely safety space for personal memory. Those network companies, for instance, social networking sites claim that they work as archives in different notions are in terms of their business logic. They collect users personal data, such as, preferences, habits, and then these data will be used as commercial purpose.
My project start with above ideas of digital archive and personal memory.
(the symbol of digital archives)
reference：
Foucault, M. (2002) The Archaeology of Knowledge, ed. and trans. A.M.
Sheridan Smith. NewYork/London: Routledge.
